I'm in the middle of planning a family trip to Disneyworld this fall (whee!) and am trying to look up 4-bedroom vacation rentals in Orlando. There are so many to choose from ! ! ! Other than price and eliminating the ones with obvious issues (like "not actually as close to Disney as they'd like you to think"), what else do I use to narrow down the list? Anyone have any particularly good/bad experiences with renting like this?

Yes! Two years ago, we rented a house in Orlando for me, my husband, and our two teenage daughters. It was comparable in price to renting hotel rooms, especially when you factored in the cost of buying restaurant meals versus buying something cheap from Publix and cooking it yourself in the house's kitchen. The place we got had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a private pool. It was very close to all the various parks, and that Publix I mentioned was about a ten-minute drive, along with all the various other shops and malls and whatnot.

We rented a duplex some distance away about ten years back - halfway to Tampa. It did have the advantage of lower price for the rental and the cost of supplies in the local area....

But we ended up buying time shares in Orlando itself...figuring that they would be easy enough to swap out for time shares elsewhere when we got our fill of Disneyworld, Universal, and the like.

If you want OFF Disney, but close - Orange Lake, Westgate Villas, and Westgate Towers are just south of Disney. Westgate Lakes is north of Disney and closer to Sea World, and south of Universal. There is another Westgate property almost across the interstate from Universal (we stayed there while it was being renovated - good location - not sure how things turned out as it was still a work-in-progress) - very close to the Pirate Dinner theater and a couple of other attractions.

I've stayed in all five listed - we own in Orange Lake & Westgate Lakes - also a Wyndham property (just bought - haven't stayed there, yet). We've never stayed on the Disney "campus".

There's always the Disney package tours where you get meals, Disney accommodations, and tickets for as many days as you want to spend at the Disney properties (and you can ride the trams, go to the water parks, or chill by the closest pool instead if you're Disneyed out that day) - depends on how many people are going to be in the group.

There are people who live in the area and can tell you how far away you can rent and still get back & forth to Disney fairly easily & quickly without spending more money for tolls, parking, and fuel than you've "saved" on the place to stay.

We rented a very nice place in New Orleans a couple of years ago. It was one side of a double shotgun and in beautiful condition. The owners used a service to manage the rental and everything went very smoothly.

Logged

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.